The TOP 10: Craziest ABA Vagrants of 2015

For the last couple years the annual Top 10 Best Vagrants post has been one of our most popular on The ABA Blog. Well, we’re ready to bring it back for a third year and ignite the arguments for 2015’s crop of megas. We’ve looked back on the year that was and assembled the following list of notable and unexpected birds that got twitchers across the continent pricing plane tickets and rental cars.

Instead of rehashing simply the rarest birds of 2015, we tried to mix things up a bit. Sure, rarity plays a role both in absolute terms and in unexpectedness, but we also tried to incorporate factors like the magnitude of excitement among birders of the ABA Area. One could easily make a great list simply of birds found in western Alaska, but there were birds all over, including areas that see significant birder coverage, and a massive El Nino made the left side of the continent the place to be in the second half of 2015.

Of course, this list is subjective, and being our own personal opinion we encourage you to hash it out in the comments section if you think we’re right on, wildly off base, or have our heads firmly up our cloacas. It’s these kind of discussions among birding friends that make our community so special.

So without further ado….

10. Zone-tailed Hawk – Rhode Island to Connecticut to New Jersey to Virginia

Social media has changed birding, that much is absolutely clear. News about rare birds is distributed more quickly, the excitement is shared more widely, and opportunities for experiences like the great Zone-tailed Hawk journey of 2015 more likely. Zone-tailed Hawk is a red-letter rarity in the eastern part of the continent, so one found at the end of September at a hawkwatching festival in New Haven, Connecticut-where it represented a 1st record for the state-was a pretty big deal. More notably, the bird was uniquely identifiable because of a frayed tail feather.

A week later, a Zone-tailed Hawk with a frayed tail-feather was picked up at the Cape May hawkwatch in New Jersey, where it represented that state’s 2nd record. Pretty weird, but then things got weirder.

The bird turned south over the bay where it eventually ended up in Virginia, where it was picked up at the Kiptopeke hawkwatch near Cape Charles (a 1st record for Virginia). There it stayed for several days before disappearing. Did it keep moving south? A strange all-black unidentified hawk was reported from coastal North Carolina a month later but that bird was never re-found. In any case, a single Zone-tailed Hawk represented 1st records for two states, and made for an exciting couple of weeks.

Variegated Flycatcher is hard to get a bead on as an ABA vagrant. The species has been seen six times times in the continental US and Canada and all over the continent at that (Tennessee, Florida, Ontario, Washington, and Maine). It can basically show up anywhere. Florida became the first to get a second record of the enigmatic austral migrant – which also happened to be its second in three years – with an individual in Fort Lauderdale in October.

Photo by Balaji Devarajan

8. Social Flycatcher – California

We put two flycatchers in a row here, but the remarkable thing about this bird is that it’s an example of how a rare bird can show up anywhere and for anyone. Maya Lopez was a keen young naturalist in Los Angeles, dutifully looking for interesting things to report to the app-based iNaturalist program. In late October, she found a weird bird perched on a wire near her home and she did what any young, plugged-in naturalist would do-she took a photo, uploaded it, and asked for help identifying it. To say the California birding community-one of the most active in the ABA Area-was gobsmacked would be an understatement. Maya’s photos were good enough to document the ABA Area’s 3rd, and California’s 1st, record of Social Flycatcher.

The end of 2015 saw a flurry of Asian vagrants in the northwest of the ABA Area. The first,and arguably most remarkable, was a Fieldfare found on the Missoula, Montana, CBC. The stunning thrush was most accommodating for visiting birders for the several days it was there. Most ABA records of Fieldfare unsurprisingly come from Alaska and Maritime Canada, with only a very small handful in the interior of the continent. Even though birders are still finding great Asian birds throughout the region, this one may remain the most surprising.

Dotterel is arguably the plover holy grail for American shorebirders, partly because of its rarity but mostly because its just so cool looking. Most records come from the western half of the ABA Area so one along the shores of Lake Huron in Ontario in October was exceptional, as it represented the 1st record for the eastern half of the continent. Unfortunately, this sharp little immature dotterel did not stick around long. Birders were not able to find it on subsequent days.

It would be impossible to get through one of these lists without including anything from western Alaska, the hard part is choosing which bird to highlight. In terms of both notability (an ABA 1st) and unexpectedness (from Central Asia), it’s hard to go wrong with the Pallas’s Rosefinch, found in late September on St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs. The species breeds in Siberia and northeast China and would have had to travel nearly 4000 miles to get to Alaska, approximately the distance between St. Paul and Columbus, Ohio.

We continue on our string of 1sts for the ABA with a bird from the beginning of last year. Not long after the AOU split of Eurasian Common Scoter from our North American Black Scoter put the potential of finding the former in the minds of ABA Area birders, one conveniently showed up in northern California. What’s more, the bird put on a bit of a show for visitors, as it was regularly and easily observed in the harbor in Crescent City for several weeks following its discovery in late January. Would that all potential ABA Area 1sts were so easily foreshadowed.

Photo by Bill Bouton

3. European Robin – Pennsylvania

This shocking vagrant did not make a lot of noise when it was first discovered visiting a backyard in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in April. The homeowner’s small backyard, on a busy street with very little parking was not suitable for visitation, much less a crush of invading birders, so the record was kept under wraps for some time. That this short-winged little Old World flycatcher would show up here is surprising, indeed, though perhaps not much less likely than a Pallas’s Rosefinch in the Bering Sea.

We keep coming back to California but it’s hard not to, as the state had an exceptional 2015. In terms of unexpected vagrants, the Gray Thrasher that turned up in San Diego in August-a potential 1st for California and the ABA Area-is certainly at the top of the list. The species is a mostly sedentary Baja endemic, and while it’s quite common within its restricted range it’s not often found outside of it. Provenance is obviously something to consider for a bird like this, but the timing seems plausible for natural vagrancy and it wouldn’t be the first Baja species to make its way north.

So let’s talk about likelihood for a second. Finding a vagrant bird is pretty unlikely. And for a bird to survive its vagrancy long enough to be discovered by a birder who can put a name to it is an even less likely event. Now let’s add a dash of hybridism into the mix. Hybrids are practically by definition unlikely and especially so as vagrants, with few exceptions. And for an apparent hybrid bird from a narrow hybrid zone in central Asia to end up in northern California, where it is observed by birders doing a census in a very underbirded location adds up to one of the single least likely incidents in the history of ABA birding.

But that’s what happened with a weird shrike, originally identified as a Northern, then a Brown, then a Red-backed, then a whatever, was discovered in early March in Mendocino County, California. As the bird underwent molt over a period of several weeks it seemed, bizarrely, to change into something that could not be conclusively identified. In the Fall 2015 issue ofNorth American Birds, Peter Pyle, Robert Keiffer, Jon Dunn, and Nial Moores lay out a pretty convincing case that this bird was a hybrid of Turkestan Shrike x Red-backed Shrike, two species of which neither have been recorded in the ABA Area. It’s a conclusion so mind-blowing that you could make an argument that this single bird was the weirdest thing ever found in the ABA Area. At very least, it’s a shoe-in for our craziest vagrant of 2015.

Photo: Steve Tucker

–=====–

We barely scratched the surface for what was a really great vagrant year in the ABA Area. Birds we considered but which did not make the cut include: Redwing from British Columbia, the incredible Franklin’s Gull invasion in the northeast (and globally), Oriental Greenfinch in British Columbia, Painted Bunting in New York City for media attention and excitement, the Dusky Warbler in California, Piratic Flycatcher in Kansas, the ABA’s 2nd Spotted Rail in Texas, a Pallas’s Reed Bunting and a Blyth’s Reed Warbler both from western Alaska, and the Tufted Flycatchers who attempted to nest in Arizona.

There were just so so many great birds in 2015 that we could have easily done a Top 20.

So that’s our take. What do you think? Did you manage to cross paths with any of these birds last year? And what did we leave off that we should have included?

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A fine bird indeed, but there are now six (6) Ontario records so the species is certainly not as rare as others that are listed here.

birdergirl60

Absolutely! thanks Alan

Jim Greaves

Only because I live in MT, and for the past two years have been wondering if I’d see one, I’d move Fieldfare to the top of the list (ie, number 1) [budget would not allow us to chase it, or we’d have seen it]. It isn’t “field fair” to use an unidentifiable bird as the “most exciting” – though I did comment to others about what its attributes seemed to suggest, without any “clear” decision on my part; never have seen 9 of the above listed species; did see 2 (or 1 repeater) Zone-tailed (Santa Barbara CA a few times). 😉 THANKS for the summary! WE who cannot afford to chase at least can vicariate.

Richard Jones

Do your birding buddies know how crazy you are in real life?

Ryan Zucker

A great list as always. I’d say that the smattering of Little Egrets in the NE in spring/summer, the Gray-crowned Yellowthroat and White-throated Thrush in Texas in February, the Tristam’s Storm-petrel, Wedge-rumped Storm-petrels, and Bulweria sp. in California all deserve some kind of mention or shout-out.

You’re right. The Tristam’s and the weird Bulweria should have made the list and that one did slip my mind. We did need to spread the love around the ABA Area a little, though, but it’s amazing that one could make a credible Top 10 ABA vagrants in 2015 list using only birds from California.

Cliff Hawley

As it should be.

Cathy Carroll

A great list

Tim Birder

I’d personally add the Little Bunting in Washington to the honorable mentions, which was also discovered on a birding forum!

Excellent point, and docked likely only because it was not chaseable (which is probably why it wasn’t at the front of my mind). The Red-flanked Bluetail in Oregon is along the same lines.

Adam Roesch

I’m curious about that Robin, since I think this is the first mention of it here.
What was the provenance discussion like?
Seems such an unlikely find as the birds are generally not migratory (Right?).

Mark Brown

Euro-Robins are partial migrants. Some parts of population do migrate gender plays a part.

Andrew Keaveney

I had not heard of this bird until reading this. I would be rather shocked if this bird was excepted as a genuine vagrant. Still waiting for Ontario’s Eurasian Blackbird to be removed from the list…ahem…

You’re right, I should probably change that. The bird seen in Rhode Island a week or two earlier was almost certainly the same bird that headed south, though I don’t know if that was unequivocally confirmed.

Matt

Is it maya Lopez or Maria Lopez? You say one in the description and the other in the caption

I think it’s Maya. I believe Maria is her mom and the holder of the iNaturalist account.

Marshall Iliff

Nice article. A few things. 1. Zone-tailed Hawk, presumably the same and possibly the same bird seen in New England, Atlantic Canada, and Cape May the previous spring/summer/fall was photographed in Rhode Island on 15 Aug; 2. Personally am not at all concerned about Gray Thrasher as a natural vagrant given that populations occur with 80 mi or less of the border, are known to move/disperse some at least in and out of “classic habitat” and urban zones etc. despite relatively sparse coverage in Baja, and have no significant habitat barriers between known areas of occurrence (Rio San Telmo, Valle de Trinidad) and the US border, and are among the least likely species for the cagebird trade and was not recorded during published cagebird surveys there by Robb Hamilton (comparatively good information, relative to a lot of postulation that happens about what is or is not common) 3. In the context of #2 above, am surprised to see European Robin suggested as a natural vagrant given precedent of several records form New York City and a few other areas in the East, lack of precedent from the only area in the East that actually collect vagrant European passerines (eastern Newfoundland only). Even in eastern Newfoundland, the list of passerine vagrants from Europe is vanishingly small (i.e, three Turdus, Song Thrush, White Wagtail, and House-Martin…and a couple semi-sketchy Fringillids…all comparatively strong fliers) and even strong flying waterbirds like lapwings, Black-tailed Godwits, European Golden-Plovers, Redshanks, etc. typically require *strong* easterlies which are *not* the prevailing pattern, especially last year. The location well inland and away from the coast is even more damning. My $0.02 and not worth any more than that though!

Yeah, a great point. We certainly have a unconscious bias towards birds that were chaseable and public, if for no other reason than the excitement was more immediate and easier to recall at the end of the year. I admit I forgot about this one, which says about the remarkable run of vagrants in 2015.

Terry Bronson

May I suggest that in the future we try to get away from the tabloidization that such things as Top 10 lists imply. Since they are personal lists or lists developed by only a handful of people they have no validity other than to those compiling them. Rather, I’d like to see a recap of ALL the most notable birds of the year, which could well total 50 or more species. List in taxonomic order and be done with it.

Pat

It’s shoo-in, not shoe-in 🙂

Tim in Albion

The Shrike! What a great story that was. It was surreal to find birders from all over the country at a location even us locals rarely bird. If it hadn’t been for the shorebird survey run by State Parks, and the observant skill of Alison Cebula, it is very likely that bird would have gone unnoticed. Really fun to see it at the top of this list!

Alex Sundvall

The Great Kiskadee in SD definitely should have been worth a mention. The bird was there for months and was the northern most record for the species!

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